I got hit while parking today. Driver in front of me, parked with no lights or flashers, backed her van up into my car because she wasn’t actually parking, just dropping one of her kids off at school.

For a moment, I’m all, like, WTF?

She immediately gets out of the van, comes back, apologizes, checks me and my car. No damage. (Her car was moving maybe 3-5 MPH; pulling out speed. I was parked.) I get out, make certain her car and her remaining kids are also unharmed, she goes on her way, I park.

Sorry, Duncan, but you’re flat wrong on this. A five to ten-ton bus cuts off 15 stone of cyclist and he bloody well better do more than sit there acting like the asshole he is. THAT was the mistake, no matter what the idiots interviewed for your local pooper-scooper paper may claim.

Comments (6)

Following two links I get to an article with the title, “The story behind the cyclist who blocked a SEPTA bus for an hour”, but I find no information on which to form an opinion for myself.

Joel

May 26, 2016 7:14 pm

I read the Atrios post before I saw this. As a cyclist, I understand the experience of being cut off. It has happened to me more times than I can count in the 40+ years I’ve cycled on city streets. But it would never have occurred to me that taking hostages was the correct response. I’m sorry to see you do.

amateur socialist

May 26, 2016 8:35 pm

Yeah I dunno. I commute a really crowded 4 lane highway to work made worse by periodic lights and recently by insane and unexpected construction to eventually eliminate (some of) the lights.

Watching the many Asshole drivers swerve in and out of traffic trying to avoid lights and construction hassles has me sometimes tempted to express my concern via the middle fingered salute. But then I remember my state’s liberal “open carry” laws and the affinity many of my neighbors have for deadly force and my fingers stay on the wheel.

run75441

May 26, 2016 8:58 pm

AS:

They could shoot that finger off.

Ken:

I do not know, 10 tons of vehicle is nothing I like to mess with as it hurts. He got his point across.

Bruce Webb

May 26, 2016 9:32 pm

I’m with Joel. The reason the bus driver sat for an hour doing nothing was because some jackhole took what was as likely as not to be an honest oversight by the driver to block not only a bus with God knows how many working people NEEDING TO GET SOMEWHERE plus however much collateral delay caused by blocking a lane of city traffic. And FOR WHAT? He wanted an apology?

Look take the number of the bus and complain to the Metro district. Write a letter to the editor. Whatever. But blocking a bus on the hopes that the driver will get OFF the bus and do something to sooth your feelings is a dickhole move. Particularly since I bet dollars to donuts that the transit authority policy forbids drivers to engage in face to face arguments with pedestrians or bikers. Who might have guns and be crazed enough to use them.

I used to ride the bus daily and it was AMAZING what stupid things bikers would do. Even when they were by the books legal. And I think a big reason is one that also applies to motorcyclists who get nailed on the freeway. When you are on a bycycle or motorcycle you have a lot more vision and situational awareness just in the nature of things. And after a while I think that riders convince themselves that if they can see things then car and bus drivers must to. As if blind spots don’t exist.

If you are biking in an urban area you have to assume that people don’t see you, at least don’t see you in the way they would see another car or bus. And further to understand that there is no bus driver in this country who is out to risk his job to scare a bike rider by cutting him off. Asshole rednecks in Ford 150s yes, bus drivers no.

This biker might have been in the right initially. But disrupting potentially hundreds and hundreds of peoples daily routine, to the point of people possibly missing medical appointments or job interviews or being late for work at a ‘no tolerance’ job to make some sort of point is pure assholery.

William Ryan

May 27, 2016 8:47 am

Where I live I would not attempt to ride my bike to work with the attitude that I have the right of way. You will be dead in short order. All you have to do to realize this is watch how many drivers are in a frenzied rush all the time on their cell phones and never giving an inch of right away for any reason. Bikers on the road are much braver breed than I or is it some notion of craziness that you think you can demand the right of way over a bus?